Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Straight For The Heart-Brain!

Greetings! This is but a piece of the multi-part Choose Your Own Adventure, Multi-Blog tale started by Barry J. Northern. It makes little sense to start here, so please feel free to check out the beginning of the story here! The previous choice that led to this blog can be found here! at Too Much Gun, Aaron's page of guns, cowboys, and everything else.

Your Choice: Pull out the baseball bat and make a mad dash for the heart-brain?!

Michael pulled the bat from his back and leaped from his seat. His companions looked shocked.

"Michael, what..." he heard Latoya start, but heard no more as he rushed towards the heart-brain.

It seemed as if time slowed a little bit more with each step he took toward the pulsing, alien thing. The rust smell was almost over powering, and he saw Mendigans turning their heads to stare at him as he ran. None of them reached out or jumped up to stop him, a fact he dismissed in his focus to attack the giant body part.

He swung the bat backwards, then forwards with a power that would put any little league player to shame. The weapon made contact with the heart-brain, and time seemed to stop. He saw the ripples of the impact, and the smell of rust was so strong he could taste it when he breathed.

As if a rubber band had been snapped, time sped back up to normal. He heard a wail in his mind, and was thrown away from the heart-brain. His bat disintegrated in his hands, covering them in sawdust. Instead of crashing to the floor, time seemed to be speeding up now. He was still flying backwards! Why hadn't he hit a wall, or his friends, or any Mendigans who might have moved behind him?

Everything became a blur, and he had to shut his eyes before he lost the contents of his stomach. And he definitely didn't want to be captured by aliens covered in puke. Besides, what would Latoya think? A cute girl couldn't ever like a guy who was covered in partially digested waffles. How did he even have the time to think all this through? Was he going to ...

Time returned to normal and he was dumped unceremoniously onto a pristine white floor. The walls around him, also white. He checked himself to make sure he wasn't wearing any sort of padded jacket, and also to make sure he wasn't missing any limbs, or hadn't grown any extra limbs.

"Hello?"

A Mendigan appeared before him, wearing a very nice business suit. It had a strange hat on the top of its head, and what appeared to be a long white beard.

"Hello, Michael."

"How do you know my name?!"

"We know a lot about you. And we are most displeased that you would attack our *******."

The last word it uttered was spoken with a strange garbling noise that seemed to come from its tentacles. Michael guessed it meant the heart-brain.

"You invaded my planet! I had to do something."

"We were so hoping for a quiet, peaceful melding of Humans and Mendigans. You are not the only person causing disharmony. I believe you can be rehabilitated, however. Unfortunately, I cannot physically stop you from your course, I can only present you with a choice."

"You're stopping me pretty good right now, it seems."

Its tentacles fluttered, producing another strange gurgling noise. Was it laughing at him?

"This is temporary. I am a visual representation of the *******. We have no more time to chat, I'm afraid. You can return to your course of action, and deal with the consequences and a room full of angry Mendigans. They will protect me at all costs, and I highly doubt you and your friends will get away with the assault. Or, I will open a door for you."

Michael decided that it was a good time to get back onto his feet.

"What kind of door? Where does it go?"

"It goes to a place you have never been, and you will perhaps be able to reconsider attacking the ******* and lead a pleasant life among the Mendigans."

The Mendigan added two doors into the room with a sweep of its arms.

"The door on my right is the way to your present course of action. The door on my left, to a life you do not know. Which will you take?"

2 comments:

Wowzers! I was waiting to see where this choice would lead and I expected it to be quite gory, but found myself in a white "room" talking to a god-like alien who wants to gently coerce me down a path of peaceful coexistence via the medium of a classic (yet metaphysical) which-door-will-you-take choice, artfully woven into this instalment as a way of continuing the interblog adventure.